Category Archives: Poland

Coronavirus is now contaminating Europe’s democracy | Jarosław Kuis and Karolina Wigura

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Viktor Orbán is using the pandemic to seize more power. This backsliding could permanently change the face of the EU

To say that Europe is united by its divisions is an exaggeration – but only a small one. Closing national borders during the pandemic may have been a rational health response, but the longer term political consequences become more troubling when we look at the order in which European governments began to reimpose frontiers.

Italy made the decision on 10 March, when the number of confirmed cases had already exceeded 10,000. Over the next five days, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary closed their borders one after the other, even though by that time in any of them the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases had not reach a hundred.

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The crisis of the centre-right could rot the European Union from within | Jan-Werner Müller

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From Hungary to the UK, mainstream conservatives have capitulated to the authoritarianism of the far right

If there is one thing on which Brussels insiders and Eurosceptics can agree, it’s that the EU has experienced a decade of crises. The eurozone crisis and the subsequent enforcement of fiscal austerity exposed the coercive underside of Brussels. The arrival of refugees in 2015 tested the limits of European liberalism. Brexit, the first time a member state has handed back its EU membership, wounded the self-image of the EU as an ever-expanding bloc. But as serious as these challenges are, none of them threatens to shake European integration like the entrenchment of the far right in two member-state governments.

Europe’s real tumult lies in the failure of its centre-right parties to avert the rise of the far right. In Hungary, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who is about to celebrate his 10th year in office, has developed a rule book for how to stealthily undermine democratic institutions and the rule of law while still appearing to follow legal procedures. For the last decade, his Fidesz party has had a large enough majority in parliament to change the constitution according to its autocratic whims. It has transformed the electoral system such that a real turnover in power is now virtually impossible. Last year, the widely respected democracy watchdog Freedom House downgraded Hungary’s status to a “partly free” country – the first time this has happened from within the EU.

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Chechen blogger escapes apparent assassination bid in Poland

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Tumso Abdurakhmanov is the latest victim of a murder attempt after similar attacks on exiled dissidents

A well-known Chechen blogger has survived an apparent assassination attempt in Poland, in the latest of a series of attacks on dissidents exiled in Europe.

Tumso Abdurakhmanov posted a video showing him disheveled and breathing hard, standing over the bloodied body of another man. “Who sent you? Where have you come from?” Abdurakhmanov asks, before producing a hammer, which he says was used by the man in an attempted murder.

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Auschwitz Memorial criticises Amazon for Hunters show and antisemitic books

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  • Prime show stars Al Pacino as head of band of Nazi hunters
  • Memorial wants books by Nazi Julius Streicher removed

The Auschwitz Memorial criticised Amazon on Sunday, for fictitious depictions of the Holocaust in its TV series Hunters and for selling books of Nazi propaganda.

Related: Outcry after MSNBC host compares Sanders’ Nevada win to Nazi invasion

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Stories of resistance efforts in Auschwitz | Letter

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Harry Schneider on the Polish resistance leader and intelligence agent Witold Pilecki

While joining in the congratulations to Costa prize winner Jack Fairweather, I wonder whether the coverage of his book The Volunteer in your pages (for example in G2 on 30 January) might perhaps have led to a couple of misunderstandings, namely that a) Witold Pilecki was an unknown quantity previously and b) his was the only resistance operation in Auschwitz.

In fact, we have known all about Pilecki’s organisational skills since the 1970s thanks to the work of the late writer and historian Józef Garliński. Like Pilecki he had been a Polish officer arrested for underground activities, and he was a prisoner in Auschwitz and other German concentration camps. His bestselling book Fighting Auschwitz (1975) describes other forms of resistance at the camp as well. Whereas Pilecki’s organisation was based entirely on military contacts, there were also political networks, notably the one run by Stanisław Dubois of the Polish Socialist party. Pilecki recognised these other strands and tried to coordinate them. A later communist resistance effort inside the camp was rather ineffectual, since, under orders from Moscow, it was denied support from the communist partisans outside.

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Auschwitz survivors share their stories on 75th anniversary – video

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World leaders have gathered to hear the stories of Holocaust survivors 75 years after the liberation of the death camp. Batsheva Dagan, Stanisław Zalewski and Marian Turski shared their experiences of life inside Auschwitz and warned that it could happen again if minority rights are not protected

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‘Thou shalt not be indifferent’: from Auschwitz’s gate of hell, a last, desperate warning

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Humanity will soon be without first-hand witnesses of the depths to which it can sink. Survivors at the memorial knew that

They came to bear witness one last time. Exactly 75 years after the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, those who had seen humanity’s descent into hell returned to speak of it while they still could – and with a new, double urgency. They testified like people running out of time, aware that their own mortality is pressing in on them – and alarmed that the world needs to hear their message now more than ever.

There were fewer than 200 of them at Monday’s international ceremony, confirmation that their ranks are becoming thinner and more frail with the passage of time. Feted as honoured guests in the place where once they were reviled inmates, even together they filled just a few rows. They were at the front of a vast marquee, large enough to house the iconic “gate of death” through which those men and women – almost all mere boys and girls at the time – had passed when it was not theatrically lit to make a spectacular backdrop for television, but when it had the power to terrify.

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Auschwitz survivors to return after 75 years for memorial ceremony

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Those making trip to former Nazi death camp fear lessons of Holocaust are being forgotten

More than 200 survivors are to gather at the former Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz, many probably for the final time, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation.

As rows over the make-up of the international guest list at the memorial ceremony threatened to overshadow Monday’s event, survivors who drew on harrowing memories of their incarceration warned the lessons from the atrocities sanctioned by Adolf Hitler’s administration and carried out often by ordinary Germans were in danger of being forgotten.

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Auschwitz survivor who had an impact | Letters

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In a London hospital near the end of her life, Denise Fluskey’s mother, a Holocaust survivor, came face to face with a doctor she had made a big impression on when she spoke at his school

My mother, Esther Brunstein, was a survivor of the Łódź ghetto, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. She spoke at the official opening of the Holocaust galleries in the Imperial War Museum, and at the first Holocaust Memorial Day in this country in Westminster Hall, London.

She died three years ago. She spoke and wrote extensively and beautifully about her experiences, but I wish to pay tribute to her with this anecdote.

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‘Declaration of war’: Polish row over judicial independence escalates

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MPs vote through legislation just as top court rules its provisions unlawful

A confrontation between the Polish government and senior judges has escalated dramatically after the country’s supreme court and parliament issued conflicting rulings on the legality of judicial reforms.

The rival rulings, which concern attempts by the ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) to assume direct control over the judiciary, have thrown the country’s legal order into chaos, with judges now liable for prosecution for complying with rulings issued by their own supreme court.

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Polish PM furious at Putin rewriting history of second world war

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Mateusz Morawiecki attacks Russian president’s ‘lies’ blaming Poland for start of war

Poland’s prime minister has launched a furious response to claims by Vladimir Putin that Poland was partially responsible for the outbreak of the second world war.

It is the latest episode in a bitter conflict over historical memory that is likely to intensify as the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazism approaches next May.

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Alex Duval Smith obituary

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Foreign correspondent with a knowledge and love of Africa who worked for the Guardian, the Independent and the BBC

The journalist Alex Duval Smith, who has died of cancer aged 55, was a free spirit with a remarkable gift for connecting with others across social, language or cultural barriers.

For more than two decades she worked as a reporter and correspondent in European and African countries, for the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, the BBC, Radio France International and France 24. She had a deep knowledge of and love for Africa and was a citizen of the world – with two nationalities and three languages; she had lived in almost a dozen countries.

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Islands in the illiberal storm: central European cities vow to stand together

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Mayors of Prague, Warsaw, Bratislava and Budapest agree to protect common values

The mayors of four central European capitals signed a so-called “Pact of Free Cities” in Budapest on Monday, vowing to stand together against populist national governments in the region.

Budapest’s mayor Gergely Karácsony was joined by his counterparts from Warsaw, Prague and Bratislava to sign the document, which promised to promote the “common values of freedom, human dignity, democracy, equality, rule of law, social justice, tolerance and cultural diversity”.

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European Green Deal to press ahead despite Polish targets opt-out

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Poland opts out of 2050 net-zero emissions after hours of wrangling over timetables and money

European Union leaders have vowed to press on with a major economic plan to confront the climate emergency, despite Poland’s opt-out from a net-zero emissions target by 2050.

The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, told journalists he had secured an exemption for Poland on the 2050 target, which is meant to become the legally binding centrepiece of the “European Green Deal” , a plan to transform Europe’s economy announced two days ago.

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Angela Merkel visits Auschwitz for first time

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German chancellor pledges further €60m donation to Auschwitz Foundation

Angela Merkel has for the first time visited the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, site of one of the most notorious atrocities Adolf Hitler’s regime inflicted on Europe.

The German chancellor also pledged a donation of €60m (£51m) towards a fund to conserve the physical remnants of the site of the barracks, watchtowers and personal items of those who died, such as shoes and suitcases.

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Amazon pulls ‘disturbing’ Christmas ornaments bearing images of Auschwitz

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Move came after Auschwitz Memorial in Poland called on the e-commerce company to remove the ‘disrespectful’ products

A Polish museum has criticised US e-commerce giant Amazon for selling Christmas ornaments decorated with images of the Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The museum at the site of the former camp in southern Poland tweeted screenshots of the items showing train tracks and barracks and requested that Amazon remove them from their site.

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‘We were indifferent to the horror’: Nazi camp inmate to give testimony at trial

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Polish resistance fighter who escaped Stutthof will face Bruno Dey, accused of being accessory to murder of 5,230 people

It was when the guards began burning piles of bodies in the open because the crematorium could not keep up with the task that Marek Dunin-Wąsowicz realised he was being held in a camp whose purpose was not just to “concentrate”, but systematically to murder thousands of people.

In the autumn of 1944, the 17-year-old Pole saw trainloads of Jews, most of them from Hungary, being taken straight to the gas chambers at Stutthof. Others were gassed inside an adapted railway carriage, set on tracks to trick prisoners into believing that they were being transported to another destination.

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Former Nazi camp guard to go on trial in Hamburg

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Man, 93, accused as accessory to murder of 5,230 people in what could be one of last such cases

A former guard at Stutthof concentration camp will go on trial in the northern German city of Hamburg on Thursday, in what could be one of the last criminal cases of an individual charged over the Holocaust.

The 93-year-old man, named in the German media as Bruno D, in keeping with the country’s press code, was 17 when he joined the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann (Death’s Head Battalion), which manned the watchtowers at the concentration camp east of what is now the city of Gdańsk, in Poland.

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30 years after communism, eastern Europe divided on democracy’s impact

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Pew research reveals very different views on whether countries are better off today

Thirty years on, few people in Europe’s former eastern bloc regret the monumental political, social and economic change unleashed by the fall of communism – but at the same time few are satisfied with the way things are now, and many worry for the future.

A Pew Research Center survey of 17 countries, including 14 EU member states, found that while most people in central and eastern Europe generally embraced democracy and the market economy, support was far from uniformly strong.

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Election results give hope to opposition in Poland and Hungary

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Analysts say tactic of cooperation against nationalist parties appears to be working

A narrower-than-expected win for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) and a serious setback for Hungary’s governing Fidesz show eastern Europe’s illiberal nationalist parties are not entirely invincible, analysts and commentators have said.

“It looks like this may be a small step in the right direction – but it’s clear the opposition still has an awful lot of work to do,” said Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.

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